Sally McKenzie,CMC President McKenzie Management SallyMcK@mckenziemgmt.com 1-877-777-6151 Ext. 11

Breaking Down the Staff Productivity Barrier

Tasks are not getting done. Dirty instruments are stacking up. Collections aren’t being made. Recalls aren’t happening, etcetera, etcetera. The stress is high, and you want to solve the problem fast. Hiring more staff is seemingly quick and easy. It’s also fraught with potential problems and expensive headaches.

Before you toss another warm body into the mix, determine if your practice really needs another employee and if YOU, the doctor, can handle the financial impact of a new hire, because you’ll be the one doling out the cash.

1. Look at wages. They should be no more than 19% to 22% of gross income, not including doctor’s salary and including hygienists, assistants and business staff. (Payroll taxes and benefits are an additional 3% -5%). If the current gross salary expense is hovering around 22%, adding another person could increase gross wages to 27%. Where’s the additional 5% going to come from? See paragraph above. But wait, don’t panic! Before you stop the presses on your classified ad, there’s more than one point to consider.

2. If the new hire is a patient coordinator who will increase practice revenue by making sure appointments aren’t lost or if the individual is a hygienist who will enable your practice to meet the demands of a growing hygiene schedule, the negative financial impact should only last for about 30 and no more than 60 days. Beyond that, production should be increasing. In other words, if the production does not go up in short order after hiring this new person, you made the wrong hiring decision.

3. Check it out! Check in and check out takes approximately 10 minutes per patient. There are 480 minutes in an eight-hour workday. If your practice is seeing 15- 22 patients per day, which would total 150-220 minutes of patient contact, one person should be able to handle front desk duties. Chatty Cathy might need to put a muzzle on it, but she doesn’t necessarily need another person. There are inefficiencies in the systems or she herself is inefficient.

4. If the doctor has 14 or more scheduled patients a day, not counting hygiene exams, that indicates the need for a second assistant. If the procedures are streamlined, one assistant can efficiently maintain two treatment rooms for a general dentist using two operatories and seeing 13 or fewer patients a day.

5. Patient dismissal should take two minutes, while disinfection of a treatment room and cleaning/sterilization of instruments should take less than five minutes. Covering counters, chair switches, and light handles with plastic wrap takes less time than spraying to clean and disinfect surfaces. Moreover, several states have passed legislation allowing for expanded functions for assistants. If yours is one, give your assistants more responsibility!

6. Sink the six-month scheduling routine. You don’t know what you are doing in six months, why do you think your patients have their lives under better control than you do? If you are scheduling patients when they are due rather than pre-scheduling appointments, your appointment book is going to be a far more reliable source in determining the need for additional hygiene staff.